MacTech Blog

May 25

Mobile experts releases network, handset cost...

Mobile Experts (www.mobile-experts.com), a domain marketplace, has released market research describing a cross-section of 5G cost. While the wide telecom industry is hyping up 5G, Mobile Experts has been making some hard-nosed financial calculations to determine the applications and scenarios where 5G can be successful.

According to their research, pure speed and low latency are not the primary objectives of 5G. Rather, Mobile Experts has discerned that 5G should be able to achieve a 10x reduction in cost per bit compared with LTE-- directed mostly toward video services of various kinds.

"Personally, I don't believe that new 5G applications will drive a lot of revenue. Virtual reality? No, that's short-range wireless, not mobile. Massive IoT? No, we have cheaper solutions for that. Critical IoT? Maybe, but that revenue will grow very slowly," commented Principal Analyst Joe Madden.

The US VR market formed 40% of the global market in the first quarter (Q1) of 2017, keeping its place as the largest market for VR in terms of volumes shipped worldwide, according to the Canalys research group (www.canalys.com).

Sony PlayStation VR dominated the US market with just over 60% share. It capitalized on its installed base of gaming devices, as well as its lower-cost headsets. Demand in the Japanese VR market meant that a total of 81,000 VR headsets were shipped in Japan. This was largely contributed by Sony, which conquered its home market with 90% market share.

As a result, China dropped to third place in terms of volumes of VR units shipped in the first quarter of 2017. HTC continues to lead in China, with 15,000 Vive headsets shipped in Q1 2017, taking up a quarter of the market. Sony experienced strong demand for its PlayStation VR in Japan, with the company still trying to fill demand...

The artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare market will witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 62.2% from now through 2022, according to new data from Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com).

AI is being adopted in healthcare using algorithm and software for the analysis of medical data with a view to predict diseases and provide proper medication. It will lead to personalization and optimization resulting in improved outcomes for both patients and healthcare systems, according to Research and Markets.

The need for pre-operative planning, high costs associated with healthcare, and rising chronic diseases amongst masses are driving the integration of AI in healthcare solutions, adds the research group. A basic AI computer used today in clinical practices can be used for alerts and reminders, diagnostic, therapy planning, information retrieval, and image...

Software—particularly cloud-based technology—is now creating roughly $1.4 trillion in economic value in the U.S. and is poised to grow even more, particularly as non-tech companies transform themselves into software businesses, according to a new report released y by global investment firm Battery Ventures (www.battery.com). The figure represents nearly 8% of U.S. GDP (gross domestic product).

The report was delivered by Battery General Partner Neeraj Agrawal at the inaugural CloudNY conference in New York. Based on earlier research by the BSA | The Software Alliance, as well as new research by Battery, the report traces the history of today’s software renaissance from the mainframe era in the 1970s through the client-server era, then into desktop “software-as-a-service” (SaaS) applications and, finally, to today’s cloud-first offerings delivered over the web.

Quark Software (www.quark.com) has released the “Content Automation Trends Report 2017.” The research, conducted in conjunction with market research firm InfoTrends, confirms that while digital transformation is driving content initiatives for most organizations, content teams continue to struggle to meet the need for engaging, device-specific content.

In fact, less than 20% of study respondents are confident their content is consistent across channels. This, along with other research findings, indicates a need for large organizations to move beyond basic file sharing and even traditional enterprise content management (ECM) in order to remain competitive.

Quark and InfoTrends surveyed 252 businesses worldwide with respondents spanning a range of industry sectors, departments, and job roles. The research objectives were to gain insight on current practices for managing content throughout its life cycle, uncover...

Interior design app Planner 5D (www.planner5D.com) will be incorporating AI into its apps in order to help users create their dream home design with a click of a button.

According to a new report from Tractica, AI software application will grow from $1.4 billion in 2016 to $60 billion by 2025. AI is currently taking over various professions, often proving that artificial mind can be more powerful, precise and creative than human. While AI has dominated chess for a long time, it has recently triumphed over humans in poker. Expanding the realm of traditional AI challenges, AI has just introduced an entirely new way of creating products by producing the famous Elbo chair, which combined aerospace engineering software with artisanal craftsmanship tool.

Planner 5D is currently creating machine learning algorithms that will train on over 40 million real user projects. All these projects offer an...

A new report from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has revealed that, by 2022, 50% of new vehicles will be shipped with V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle) hardware, a technology that enables real-time short-range communication between vehicles.

The new research found that the total number of V2V-enabled consumer vehicles on the road will reach 35 million by 2022, up from less than 150,000 vehicles in 2017. This strong growth rate (376% CAGR) reflects the early stages of roll-out for V2V, but will still only represent 2.7% off all vehicles.

The technology, launched by Mercedes-Benz and Cadillac, will play an important role in the advance of autonomous vehicles, as the annual production of self-driving cars approaches 15 million by 2025. Juniper Research found that, alongside GPS, LiDAR (Light-Detection and Ranging) and road mapping, V2V will be amongst the critical technologies in delivering...

Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $343.5 billion in 2016, a 2.6% increase from 2015 revenue of $334.9 billion, according to final results by Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com).

The top 25 semiconductor vendors' combined revenue increased 10.5 percent, a significantly better performance than the overall industry's growth. However, most of this growth resulted from merger and acquisition (M&A) activity.

"The semiconductor industry rebounded in 2016, with a weak start to the year, characterized by inventory correction, giving way to strengthening demand and an improving pricing environment in the second half," said James Hines research director at Gartner. "Worldwide semiconductor revenue growth was supported by increasing production in many electronic equipment segments, improving NAND flash memory pricing and relatively benign currency movements.”

The worldwide cloud infrastructure services market continued growing in the first quarter (Q1) of 2017, up 42% year on year to reach $11.4 billion, according to Canalys’ latest estimates.

Amazon’s AWS maintained its dominance, holding a stable global market share of 31%. It was followed by its strongest hyper-scale rivals — Microsoft, Google and IBM. Microsoft grew 93% and Google was up 74% compared to the same quarter a year ago. These growth rates were faster than those of AWS and IBM, which grew 43% and 38% respectively, according to the research group.

“Competition for enterprise customers is intensifying among leading cloud service providers, which are investing heavily to secure key national and global accounts,” said Canalys (www.canalys.com) Research Analyst Daniel Liu. “Timing is crucial, as many large accounts are assessing, formulating and executing strategies to move existing workloads and...

New data from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that the global value of contactless transactions made via payment cards, mobile and wearables, will reach $1.3 trillion by 2019, more than doubling from an estimated $590 billion in 2017.

According to the research group, contactless card levels will continue to dominate transaction values, accounting for 80% of total contactless transactions in 2019. The research forecasts that contactless transactions via debit/credit cards will exceed $2 trillion globally by 2021.

Juniper’s research found that many markets with a relatively well established contactless infrastructure have been seeded by the card providers, albeit with varying degrees of success. The research group found that in 2016, while cards accounted for well over 90% of transactions by value in many European markets (for example, rising to 99% in Spain), in the U.S....

Last Friday morning, a ransomware attack started spreading across the globe, infecting tens of thousands of computers. Those affected included over 40 health service trusts and FedEx’s offices in the United Kingdom, a telecom in Spain, and the Russian Interior Ministry.

The malicious software, transferred over email and stolen from the National Security Agency (NSA), exposed vulnerabilities in computer systems in almost 100 countries in total, constituting one of the largest ransomware attacks on record.

The attack was in fact largely preventable, if only more Windows users had installed the critical security patch that Microsoft released for it two months ago and followed a few other security rules.

“Criminals took advantage of the fact that most people still don’t do enough to protect their computers,” said Marty P. Kamden, CMO of NordVPN (Virtual Private Network). “We at NordVPN strive to raise public awareness about what each person...

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released “The Changing TV Experience: 2017,” a study revealing that most U.S. adults (56%) own a streaming enabled TV, a 56% rise from just two years ago, a fundamental shift in the way that Americans watch television.

Almost all Americans (92%) own a TV. However, today the majority of time spent (54%) watching TV is dedicated to something other than traditional linear programming (46%). The largest share of that non-linear time is spent streaming digital video (20%), which can include network TV shows, subscription service original shows, or original digital video content. The remaining viewing time is devoted to: watching programming via DVR recording (15%), Video on Demand (6%), and downloaded video (5%), in addition to another 8%t that is uncategorized.

Among the 56% of U.S. Adults who own streaming enabled TVs, watching digital video on them became an entrenched habit in 2017, with nearly half (46%) saying they do so...

After over 15 years of research and development in academia and industry, several main applications of 3D bioprinting technology are ready to be realized. In IDTechEx’s (www.IDTechEx.com) new report titled "3D Bioprinting 2017 – 2027: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts," the global 3D bioprinting market is predicted to experience a period of high growth to reach a size of $1.8 billion by the year 2027.

3D bioprinting, defined as the layer-by-layer deposition of cells to create a final 3D construct, provides users with the unique ability to create artificial tissue that closely resembles native tissue in form and function from basic biological building blocks. This biological mimicry not only enables a more efficient use of research resources by yielding physiologically relevant results, but also has applications in regenerative medicine...

DFLabs (www.dflabs.com), which specializes in security automation and orchestration technology, has announced new research from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), commissioned by DFLabs and other technology vendors, which shows that when it comes to the evolution of Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations, 71% of respondent organizations find it more difficult today than it was two years ago due to the changing threat landscape, followed by volume of alerts and increased regulatory changes.

“Despite businesses making it a priority, there is great confusion on how to make sense of and integrate security analytics and Operations. Most organizations are dealing with 10 to 25 technologies ranging from SIEMs, vulnerability assessment, endpoint detection, threat intelligence and user behavior to incident response. They are challenged with the total cost of operations and spending too much time on emergency issues,” said Jon...

CIOs have a major role to play in preparing businesses for the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on business strategy and human employment, according to Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). The research group predicts that by 2022, smart machines and robots may replace highly trained professionals in tasks within medicine, law and IT.

"The economics of AI and machine learning will lead to many tasks performed by professionals today becoming low-cost utilities," said Stephen Prentice, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "AI's effects on different industries will force the enterprise to adjust its business strategy. Many competitive, high-margin industries will become more like utilities as AI turns complex work into a metered service that the enterprise pays for, like electricity.”

The effects that AI will have on the enterprise will depend on its industry, business, organization and customers. Mr...

The travel season is almost here. Free Wi-Fi at cafes, airports, restaurants and city streets is used by almost everyone who’s traveling – but how many people take an extra step to make sure their browsing is not only convenient, but also safe?

Last year, NordVPN (Virtual Private Network) released safety tips for public Wi-Fi, but the number of public Wi-Fi scams only seems to be increasing, showing that people still don’t treat their online security seriously. According to privatewifi.com study, 79% of respondents still don’t use a VPN when they go on public Wi-Fi. According to NordVPN’s recent survey (reikia linko be login credentials, geriausiai i webpage, o ne Exceli) almost half of respondents (reiktu procento) didn’t know that, for example, it was dangerous to shop online on a public network.

Here are some of the most common ways that a hacker can take advantage of someone’s device connected to a public Wi-Fi hotspot:

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that chatbots will redefine the customer service industry, with healthcare and banking sectors set to benefit the most. The new research forecasts that chatbots will be responsible for cost savings of over $8 billion per annum by 2022, up from $20 million this year.

Juniper expects dramatic cost savings to be made in the healthcare and banking sectors, as enquiry resolution times are reduced and cost savings boosted. Research author Lauren Foye explains: “We believe that healthcare and banking providers using bots can expect average time savings of just over four minutes per enquiry, equating to average cost savings in the range of $0.50-$0.70 per interaction. As Artificial Intelligence advances, reducing reliance on human representatives undoubtedly spells job losses.”

According to a new market research report by MarketsandMarkets (www.marketsandmarkets.com), the market size for the Internet of Things (IoT) operating system market will grow from $289.2 million in 2017 to $1,721.3 Million by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42.9%.

The major forces driving the operating system market include the increasing traction for emergence of technologies, such as cloud computing and mobility, adds the research group. What’s more, adoption by the small and medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) is populating the growth of the IoT operating systems. The reason being, SMEs always look for operating systems to focus on developing a systematic approach for organizations and becoming more proactive toward their business operations.

The client side architecture of IoT operating systems is designed to provide a consolidated view of the processed and analyzed data...

Moore's Law, which states that processing speeds will double every two years as we cram more and more silicon transistors onto chips, has been faltering since the early 2000s when the law started to run up against fundamental limitations presented by the laws of thermodynamics.

While the chip industry, with Intel leading the charge, has found ways to sidestep the limitations up until now, many are now saying that despite the industry’s best efforts, the stunning gains in processor speeds will not be seen again by the simple application of Moore’s Law.

In fact, there is evidence to show that we are reaching the plateau for the number of transistors that will fit on a single chip. Intel has even suggested silicon transistors can only keep getting smaller during the next five years.

As a result, Intel has resorted to other practices to improve processing speeds, such as adding multiple...

Organizations need to rethink traditional approaches to customer experience management according to a new study sponsored by Axway (www.axway.com), “a catalyst for transformation,” in partnership with IDC, a provider of global IT research and advice.

The study found that despite customer experience being the top digital initiative for organizations, 69% have yet to implement a single view of the customer.
The study surveyed more than 600 senior executives in IT, digital and customer experience roles at the largest global enterprises across the U.S., Europe and Asia.

It revealed that customer experience is now the most critical digital initiative for more than 70% of enterprises. The study also indicated that customer experience is now replacing product and price as a means to create brand value, distinctiveness and strategic differentiation.

The Spy has become one (a technology driver that is) for as reported in his March column, he and wife Joyce recently purchased their first new car in over two decades--a Subaru Forester--and it is technology rich.

Typical of mind-range SUV crossovers, it has a rear camera with dash display for same, multiple information screens, steerable fog lights, smart air bags, blind spot detectors in the mirrors, keyless entry with secure fob, always on all wheel drive, adaptive cruise control, latched gas access lid, rear side obstacle detectors, lane departure detection and correction, heated front seats, a media centre with more options than they will ever use (or even want). OTOH, plenty of safety and anti-theft features, but of course OTOH, lots of potential for technology to go south.

Odd omissions include no tire pressure monitoring--required in the US of A, but left out here in the frozen north. Subtract a couple of marks. Also...

The head of FCC (U.S. Federal Communications Commission), Ajit Pai, has announced that he will start the process of repealing FCC’s net neutrality rules that were approved by President Obama in 2015. The announcement starts a new battle over the future of the Internet, censorship and role of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) in what people can read or watch online.

Current net neutrality rules prohibit broadband providers from giving or selling access to a "fast lane" of Internet to certain Internet services over others. A neutral network gives equal transmission priority over all content moving across it, and no content is subjected to slow downs or blocking. The loss of net neutrality could mean that priority is given to the content of big providers.

Many websites worry that when the rules are repealed, they will lose access to clients and page views. Even larger websites – such as streaming service providers like Netflix or Hulu – can experience...

A new study by Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com)has found the value of digital payments will approach $3.9 trillion this year, representing an increase of more than 14% on last year’s total. While the bulk of transaction value (55%) will be accounted for by online retail purchases for physical goods, P2P (Person to Person) money transfers will see the largest year-on-year net increase in value ($200 million).

The new research shows that the U.S. will see particularly strong growth, with the bank-backed Zelle Network expected to build on its successful debut in 2016 as additional banks come on board. Juniper emphasizes that the demonetization policies employed by India’s government had encouraged a surge in mobile wallet adoption and, with it, sharp increases in both P2P and mobile retail transactions.

Meanwhile, the research group says the U.S. will see further strong growth in...

Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com) has announced the addition of the "Smartphone, Tablet & Modem Market 2017" report to their offering.

This report provides a detailed market analysis of all significant smartphones, wireless-connected tablets (cellular & Wi-Fi) and modems. Five-year forecasts are provided in considerable detail for each. In addition, smartphone and non-smart cellphones are forecast for all global regions.

The report also provides 2016 quarterly unit shipments and YOY market shares in revenue for the top smartphone, tablet and modem suppliers and discusses the 2017 market positioning of the primary vendors. Both revenue and unit shipments for 2016 are provided for major vendors of each category and five-year forecasts for all covered devices are included.

Top-performing organizations in the private and public sectors, on average, spend a greater proportion of their IT budgets on digital initiatives (33%) than government organizations (21%), according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). Looking forward to 2018, top-performing organizations anticipate spending 43% of their IT budgets on digitalization, compared with 28% for government CIOs, says the research group.

Gartner's 2017 CIO Agenda survey includes the views of 2,598 CIOs from 93 countries, representing US$9.4 trillion in revenue or public sector budgets and $292 billion in IT spending, including 377 government CIOs in 38 countries. Government respondents are segmented into national or federal, state or province (regional) and local jurisdictions, to identify trends specific to each tier. For the purposes of the survey, respondents were also categorized as top, typical and trailing...

Apple CEO Tim Cook's recent announcement putting Augmented Reality (AR) at the forefront of the tech giant’s product strategy has emboldened and provoked technology companies to showcase their own AT technologies and platforms.

Virtual Reality (VR) seems to have taken a back seat as the question is no longer VR or AR. The buzz is about who will dominate the AR space. Following Impossible's introduction of its Google Tango based, and open source, Glimpse platform, Facebook announced its first mainstream AR platform during its annual Developer Conference. Facebook put the camera, more specifically the camera on your smartphone, front and center of its AR strategy by unveiling Facebook Camera Effects to its developers during F8.

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's new open source platform will allow developers to make AR apps that will enable users to view and digitally manipulate the physical world around them with smartphone cameras. A technology popularized...

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said that “software is eating the world” in a famous essay published in “The Wall Street Journal” back in 2011. He was referring to the way that software is reshaping a growing number of industries - from airlines to manufacturing — and how it's becoming a necessity to embrace software to remain competitive.

The good news is that these trends have created many opportunities for investors keeping a close eye on Apple, MySize, BlackBerry, Alphabet and Qualcomm.
It's hard to purchase clothing online because you can't try it on beforehand. But, that hasn't stopped online shoppers from purchasing billions of dollars worth of clothing and shoes online each year. Many shoppers purchase multiple items with plans to return the items that don't fit. These shoppers are expected to return about a third of these goods, according to Customer Growth Properties (http://tinyurl....

Michael Inouye, principal analyst at ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) says Virtual Reality (VR) creates more revenues today than Augmented Reality (AR), but it relies heavily on hardware sales, which account for over 60% of total revenue compared to roughly 30-40% in AR.

AR has tremendous viral potential because it leverages mobile devices already in most end users’ pockets, with service availability in the home, public spaces, and workplaces, says Inouye. This creates nearer term synergies with mobile device manufacturers (such as Apple) and social networks (such as Facebook), he adds. By 2019 AR is forecast to surpass VR in total revenue opportunity, reflecting VR’s longer-term development cycle as content developers, workplaces, and consumers incrementally embrace future iterations of VR hardware and optimize new use cases.

Deep learning machines are taking over a large portion of drivers' automotive tasks and will completely take over driving in 10 years, according to a recently published report by IoT [Internet of Things] market research firm ON World (www.onworld.com).

"The connected car is experiencing exponential technological advancements and enormous investment over the past three years," says Mareca Hatler, ON World's research director. "This accelerated growth can be seen in the patents granted, favorable government regulations and the videos of Tesla cars driving their occupants to work while they shave.”

3Cinteractive (3c.com), a provider of mobile marketing services, has unveiled its 2017 Mobile Loyalty Progress Report, providing an update on how brands are bridging the technology gap in offering mobile-enabled loyalty programs to consumers.

Last year, 3C surveyed brand marketers and consumers on the landscape of mobile-enabled loyalty program offerings, and the report uncovered a distinct gap in what brands were offering versus consumer expectations. This year, 3C again presented its mobile loyalty online survey to more than 2,300 consumers and over 500 brand marketers, finding improvements in some key areas. In fact, 64% of brands reported an increase in loyalty program membership over the last year—and the majority cited the addition of mobile components as the biggest contributor to this increase. Other key findings:

We live in a visual society, and increasingly a video society. The corporate world knows this, and is leveraging video for uses other than just branding or marketing. Video is now often used to communicate important messages for moving people to action: for example, to invite investors to take a stake in your company, to encourage employees to rally around a strategy or initiative, or to recruit prospective employees.

As a filmmaker and creative director, I’m constantly looking for the next technology or trend to make my own work stronger and understand the context that corporations are coming to the table with. Here are some trends I’ve noticed lately.

° Welcome to the video tsunami. Video is by far the way more and more people want to receive messages and information. We’re at the crest of the wave, and the surf is up. By 2020, 84% of all Internet traffic will be video. That’s an astounding number.

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games such as World of Warcraft, and MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games including DoTA 2, are to account for almost 25% of the digital games industry this year.

The new research forecasts that revenues from this genre will accelerate to $43bn by 2021, accounting for over a third of global games industry revenues. The research cites the F2P (Free to Play) model as being the key catalyst. The research also found that console and mobile devices offer great scope for future growth, with these platforms having been underutilized until now, particularly in Western markets.

Nevertheless, Juniper predicted that opportunity across these platforms would be distinct for MMO and MOBA games, with emerging technology and business model innovation acting to increase traction. For example,...

Venafi (www.venafi.com), a provider of machine identity protection, has announced the results of a study on the cryptographic security practices of DevOps teams. Cryptographic security risks are amplified in DevOps settings, where compromises in development or test environments can spread to production systems and applications.

According to the study, many organizations fail to enforce vital cryptographic security measures in their DevOps environments. These problems are especially acute among organizations that are in the midst of adopting DevOps practices, but even organizations that say their DevOps practices are mature do not follow security practices designed to protect cryptographic keys and digital certificates.

“It’s clear that most organizations are still struggling with securing the cryptographic keys and digital certificates used to uniquely identify machines,” said Kevin Bocek, chief security...

NSS Labs (www.nsslabs.com), which specializes in operationalizing cybersecurity, has announced the results of its Data Center Firewall (DCFW) Group Test. Seven products from five vendors were tested. All seven products scored 100% in firewall policy enforcement testing, but no product demonstrated the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) across all tested scenarios.

Enterprises store vast quantities of sensitive, business-critical information in modern data centers. Growth in the deployment of mobility and cloud computing technologies in data centers has transformed traffic patterns from a predominantly business-to-business (B2B) model with long duration connections commonly found in software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to a business-to-consumer (B2C) model with short lived, high-volume connections, such as e-commerce transactions. When selecting DCFWs to support these use cases, enterprises look for products...

The global market of artificial intelligence is anticipated to grow at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of over 60% during 2017-2022, according to Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com).

On the basis of application, global artificial intelligence market has been broadly segmented into image recognition, natural language processing, speech recognition, gesture control and others, according to the research group. Among these categories, image recognition dominated global artificial intelligence market in 2016, and the segment is expected to maintain its dominance over the next five years as well.

These machines are also capable of taking decisions by self-learning from the nearby environment. Global artificial intelligence market is expected to grow at a robust pace over the next five years, owing to its widespread implementation in numerous industries, such as automobile,...

According to a research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight (www.berginsight.com), the total value of the global real-time mobile location-based advertising and marketing (LBA) market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 54% to € 10.7 billion in 2018.

This will then correspond to 38.6% of all mobile advertising and marketing. Location-based advertising and marketing will thus represent around 7% of digital advertising, or 2 percent of the total global ad spend for all media, according to the research group.

The past year has seen a number of significant developments in the real-time mobile LBA space. One example is the concept of beacons based on Bluetooth low energy (BLE).

"The concept of Bluetooth marketing has been reinvigorated following Apple’s introduction of iBeacon in 2013,"says Rickard Andersson, senior analyst, Berg Insight.

Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc. (DCL) and the Center for Information Development Management (CIDM), have released the results of the 5th annual "Following the Trends – Is Your Content Ready?" survey, and the results show, among many other insights, that a surprising 51% of those polled responded "No," that their content is not ready – a 21% increase over last year.

Each year the survey's goal is to probe and track how, and if, organizations or individual professionals are adapting their processes and content to be more viable in an increasingly electronic world. Questions covered a wide range of topics around content, including types of content being developed (User Manuals, Release Notes, Training Materials), authoring tools (XML author, MS Word, FrameMaker), and mobile strategies, as well as classic concerns like staff, budgets, and time.

Spanning five years, this survey has attracted almost 1900 respondents with 2017's drawing in 369 professionals. "There is...

Citi says that the affordability of financial services fell by 3.2% in high-performing countries, but grew by 2.3% in emerging ones – highlighting that many countries in the developed world are still struggling to bring their unbanked and underbanked in to the digital fold.

“The efficiencies and cost savings of moving to digital money are potentially staggering,” says Greg Baxter, Citi’s global head of Digital, “and the social benefits from wider financial inclusion enormous. It is therefore a concern that the Index is highlighting a risk that some low-income countries and potentially even low income segments within developed countries could fall irretrievably behind in the digital economy.”

Citi’s research finds that true adoption of digital money can only happen when there is a concerted, holistic effort that includes a supportive institutional environment, financial and ICT infrastructure, digital money solutions from government and the private sector, and...

Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $386 billion in 2017, an increase of 12.3% from 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com).

Favorable market conditions that gained momentum in the second half of 2016, particularly for commodity memory, have accelerated and raised the outlook for the market in 2017 and 2018, according to the research group. However, the memory market is fickle, and additional capacity in both DRAM and NAND flash is expected to result in a correction in 2019.

"While price increases for both DRAM and NAND flash memory are raising the outlook for the overall semiconductor market, it will also put pressure on margins for system vendors of smartphones, PCs and servers," said Jon Erensen, research director at Gartner. "Component shortages, a rising bill of materials, and the prospect of having to counter by raising average selling prices (ASPs) will create a volatile...

UI LABS (uilabs.org) and The Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA) have released first augmented reality (AR) hardware and software functional requirements guidelines, which will help AR technology companies develop products for industrial users.

These AR functional requirements documents are designed to lead to technology that improves the performance and efficiency for manufacturers in a number of areas, including employee training and safety; factory floor and field services operations; machine assembly, inspection and repair; manufacturing space and product design; and much more.

Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and Procter & Gamble initiated the guidelines development process as part of a project through the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII), a UI LABS collaboration. Recently, 65 organizations — including industry, AR providers, universities, and government agencies — came together for a workshop to offer insight into their...

IHS Markit (www.ihs.com) — an information, analytics and solutions firm — says the market for wireless power and charging is expected to grow in 2017, with global receiver shipments reaching 325 million units by year end. The market grew approximately 40% in 2016.

According to the new report, mobile phones remain the primary driver for development of wireless power technology and mobile phones, laptops and wearable devices will drive receiver market growth. Receiver unit shipments are expected to climb this year as demand increases; Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) make their decision on specifications; and the market moves towards glass-backed phones.

In 2016, the flagship Samsung handset made the biggest single contribution to enabled receiver shipments, according to IHS Markit. Samsung’s decision to retain wireless charging on the Galaxy S7, and LG’s decision to add the technology to its new G6 device (U....

Online consumer payments remain the biggest growth market in payments, and will continue growing strongly as more consumers gain access to the Internet and to tools that can be used online, according to Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com).

Developing countries, particularly China, are expected to be at the forefront of this growth, although even the most developed online commerce markets will grow strongly over the next five years, adds the research group. In fact, China overtook the US as the world's largest online commerce market in 2015, with Chinese consumers spending a total of $699 billion online that year.

According to Research and Markets, 20% of the total value of online commerce transactions across all markets will be accounted for by m-commerce by 2020, with the market recording a compound annual growth rate of 17% from 2015 to 2020. Consumer spending patterns...

On April 3, President Trump allowed Internet Service Providers to collect and sell user data. Many experts feel that this was just the beginning - and the signs of new developments are already visible.

A notice has already been served by Trump administration that net neutrality - which guarantees that all content is equally accessible - will be possibly revoked. If that happens, ISPs will also be able to control which content users see, giving preference to more lucrative options, and making it harder for independent streaming services or smaller sites to compete.

As a result of the rights given to Internet Service Providers, a new type of an ISP might emerge: an ISP that is also an ad network and content company, taking full advantage of data it receives from its tracking supercookies and other methods.

According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of World Wide Web, the measure repealing the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) online...

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.5 trillion in 2017, a 1.4% increase from 2016, according to Gartner (www.gartner.com). This growth rate is down from the previous quarter's forecast of 2.7% due in part to the rising U.S. dollar, adds the research group.

"The strong U.S. dollar has cut $67 billion out of our 2017 IT spending forecast," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "We expect these currency headwinds to be a drag on earnings of U.S.-based multinational IT vendors through 2017."

The data center system segment is expected to grow 0.3% in 2017. While this is up from negative growth in 2016, the segment is experiencing a slowdown in the server market.

"We are seeing a shift in who is buying servers and who they are buying them from," said Lovelock. "Enterprises are moving away from buying servers from the traditional vendors and instead renting server power in...

According to the IDC (www.idc.com) research group, vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 9.2% year over year to $32.6 billion in 2016, with vendor revenue for the fourth quarter (4Q16) growing at 7.3% to $9.2 billion.

Cloud IT infrastructure sales as a share of overall worldwide IT spending climbed to 37.2% in 4Q16, up from 33.4% a year ago. Revenue from infrastructure sales to private cloud grew by 10.2% to $3.8 billion, and to public cloud by 5.3% to $5.4 billion. In comparison, revenue in the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment decreased 9.0% year over year in the fourth quarter.

Private cloud infrastructure growth was led by Ethernet switch at 52.7% year-over-year growth, followed by server at 9.3%, and storage at 3.6%. Public cloud growth was also led by Ethernet switch at 30.0% year-...

A new generation of smart home sensors, which ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) predicts to exceed four billion installations globally by 2022, will soon change how homes are built, maintained, and managed.

The sensors, embedded in a wide range of smart home devices and appliances, will deliver near real-time understanding of even slight changes within home environments, according to the research group. The ability to transform this data into valuable systems and services will be at the heart of smart home adoption and the future housing market.

"Smart home sensors will lay the foundation for the automated smart home experience," says Jonathan Collins, Research Director at ABI Research. "The advanced sensing capabilities will fine-tune new services and applications from home personalization to energy and security management."

A new report from Mobile Experts (www.mobile-experts.net) says the small cell forecast ratcheted down a notch this year, as some key programs in China and direct-to-enterprise channel did not materialize as anticipated. However, growth due to "densification" and indoor coverage has grown in strength, resulting in a strong revenue outlook, according to the research group.

"The overall market, including residential femtocells, is growing at about 17% (CAGR) over our forecast period," says Mobile Experts Senior Analyst Kyung Mun. "But the growth for non-residential small cells is even more dramatic. We expect carrier and enterprise segments to grow at over 30% CAGR from 2016-2022.”

According to Mobile Experts, market trends point to an upward trajectory this year. Carriers with broad LTE coverage are reaching a level of traffic density in excess of 1 Gbps/km2, which leads to a need for small cells...

New findings from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that OTT messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Snapchat, will see adoption grow from 2.3 billion unique users in 2016 to 4.2 billion by 2021 representing a growth of over 12% CAGR (compound annual growth rate). The research group anticipates that players will begin focusing their strategies around the development and provision of AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot tools.

Juniper predicts that OTT players will reposition their messaging platforms as CRM (customer relationship management) tools. By leveraging AI technology, these OTT apps will offer a high value proposition by creating a new level of consumer engagement. For end-customers, these platforms offer an attractive means of engagement by allowing for greater consumer flexibility and minimizing call wait times, Juniper adds.

RESCUECOM (http://www.rescuecom.com), a computer repair company, has released its 2017 Computer Repair Report, which analyzes the data from its calls to provide insight and tips on how to handle top computer repair problems.

Modern apps are supposed to expand capabilities across multiple devices without the need to code a new app for each device; however, it seems that with each new Windows 10 build, something breaks, and that is likely with the...

Worldwide security tech spending to reach $81.7 billion in 2017
A new from International Data Corporation (www.idc.com) forecasts worldwide revenues for security-related hardware, software, and services will reach $81.7 billion in 2017, an increase of 8.2% over 2016.

Global spending on security solutions is expected to accelerate slightly over the next several years, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.7% through 2020 when revenues will be nearly $105 billion.

"The rapid growth of digital transformation is putting pressures on companies across all industries to proactively invest in security to protect themselves against known and unknown threats," said Eileen Smith, program director, Customer Insights and Analysis. "On a global basis, the banking, discrete manufacturing, and federal/central government industries will spend the most on security hardware, software, and services throughout the...

Software Updates via MacUpdate

Microsoft Office 2016 16.11 - Popular pr...

Microsoft Office 2016 - Unmistakably Office, designed for Mac.
The new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote provide the best of both worlds for Mac users - the familiar Office... Read more

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 19.1.2 - Profess...

Photoshop CC 2018 is available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud for as little as $19.99/month (or $9.99/month if you're a previous Photoshop customer).
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Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2018 18.1.0.10155 -...

Dreamweaver CC 2018 is available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud for as little as $19.99/month (or $9.99/month if you're a previous Dreamweaver customer).
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Adobe Flash Player 29.0.0.113 - Plug-in...

Adobe Flash Player is a cross-platform, browser-based application runtime that provides uncompromised viewing of expressive applications, content, and videos across browsers and operating systems.... Read more

Drive Genius 5.2.0 - $79.00

Drive Genius features a comprehensive Malware Scan. Automate your malware protection. Protect your investment from any threat. The Malware Scan is part of the automated DrivePulse utility. DrivePulse... Read more

MegaSeg 6.0.6 - Professional DJ and radi...

MegaSeg is a complete solution for pro audio/video DJ mixing, radio automation, and music scheduling with rock-solid performance and an easy-to-use design. Mix with visual waveforms and Magic... Read more

ffWorks 1.0.7 - Convert multimedia files...

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Dash 4.1.5 - Instant search and offline...

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Evernote 7.0.3 - Create searchable notes...

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at anytime, from... Read more

jAlbum Pro 15.3 - Organize your digital...

jAlbum Pro has all the features you love in jAlbum, but comes with a commercial license. You can create gorgeous custom photo galleries for the Web without writing a line of code!
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All the best games on sale for iPhone an...

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Everything You Need to Know About The Fo...

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The best games that came out for iPhone...

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Death Coming (Games)

Death Coming 1.1.1.536
Device: iOS Universal
Category: Games
Price: $1.99, Version: 1.1.1.536 (iTunes)
Description:
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What You Need to Know About Sam Barlow’s...

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Pixel Plex Guide - How to Build Better T...

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Fortnite Will Be Better Than PUBG on Mob...

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Apple is now offering Certified Refurbished 2017 10″ and 12″ iPad Pros for $100-$190 off MSRP, depending on the model. An Apple one-year warranty is included with each model, and shipping is free:
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